I have always wondered why we work our entire lives just to make enough money and retire. Why do people go to school for their whole childhood, then go to college for however many years they go for their degrees, just to get that degree and work for 40-50 years just to have enough money to retire? As humans, we have a schedule we follow for the rest of our lives: wake up, go to school or work, come home, sleep and do it all over again the next day. I feel like it is sad for us to not be able to enjoy life. Instead, we work all the time.
I have always thought about what I wanted to do in life as a job. It has gone through a variety of ideas, from being a registered nurse to an actress, music producer, news anchor or emergency medical technician. I think it is crazy for teens to have a lot of pressure on their shoulders in deciding what career they would want to do for the rest of their lives.
I recently went on a field trip to Vincennes University, and I was astonished at how quickly we have to make life choices. I was thinking to myself about how in two years I would be starting my freshman year of college, and here I am still pondering what I am wanting to do in life.
Although becoming an adult and figuring out what you want to do for the rest of your life may seem a long ways away, it really is not.
As I become older, I keep receiving talks about how I need to figure something out for myself in what I want to do in life. We only have one life to live on Earth, so why waste it by working? In reality, we should be having fun in life and not worrying about a career choice, especially for teenagers in high school. When I am in school, it always hits me that I am one day closer to graduating, and I still have no idea what I want to do.
When I was a freshman in high school, I did not take the class college and careers, despite all freshmen being highly recommended to enroll in the course. I feel like not taking the class really set me back in the lack of knowledge that I needed to know in the real world, let alone the knowledge I needed to know for making a career choice.
While I feel like I need to keep a focus on what I want to do in life, I also want to enjoy life around me. But, I can’t. I’m always in school, working, doing extracurricular activities or studying. I really never get to enjoy life the way I want to. Instead, I am always focused on what will I do now that will help me in the future.
As for me, I always strive for what I want to do, but the simple answer right now is, ‘I don’t know,’ and that is okay. In addition to having a large burden on kids’ shoulders because of school, teachers, parents and adults in general trying to help us figure out what we want is another factor in that stress. Choosing a career is a life-changing choice that we have to make, and a lot of kids are not ready to make that decision.
